This invention relates to mailers and specifically to an apparatus "audio mailer" apparatus, including a tape recorder or other sound recording and reproducing device non-removably encased and configured as a mailer.
The object of this invention is to enable people to more conveniently send or receive voice or other sound messages through the mail or other forms of transit. It is currently a not uncommon practice for people to send one another individual cassette audiotapes through the mail, sometimes in rectangular cardboard mailers conforming to the size of a standard cassette audiotape. Encasing and configuring a small, inexpensive tape recorder or other sound recording and reproducing device as a mailer makes this practice more convenient by obviating the necessity for the sending or receiving party to locate a tape recorder unit and insert the audiotape cassette for recording or playback purposes.
The audio mailer is a new option among the arsenal of routine communicative methods and instruments such as written letters, telegrams, facsimile transmissions, telephone calls, answering machine messages, or separately conveyed audiotape cassettes. As such, it is designed with the requirements of inexpensive mass production and use, light weight and low retailand postal costs in mind. The invention is of general utility to those who find conveying a message through dictation a more personal and/or efficient alternative to (or addition to) written or typed communication, or a desirable substitute for a telephone call. It is of particular utility to specially situated individuals such as the non-or marginally literate, the physically disabled, or widely separated intimates without ready access to telephones (or requiring a less expensive alternative to calling), among others, for whom sending a verbal communication by mail is preferable to, and more practical than, other communicative forms. The audio mailer is also of potential use to certain individuals, such as musical artists, who regularly send others audio exemplars of their work product.
Tangentially hereto, as referenced above, audio devices have been previosly fashioned for mailing in the form of a postcard carrying a sound record [Mazuranic] and an audible greeting card [Barnett et al.], have been simply packaged in the form of a toy cardboard record player [von Ronn, W. Germany], and have been encased in the recess of a religious cross bearing an audiotape message [Garcia].